It is a memoir of dangerous obsession and enchantment.Ī surfer's tale of his quest for self-transcendence is a masterpiece that recalls early James Salter Geoff Dyer, the Observer I don't know anything about surfing, but I was gripped by the intensity of his language, never mind the thrilling recklessness of his behaviour in the waves Olivia Laing, Guardian Best Holiday Reads 2015 There are too many breathtaking, original things in Barbarian Days to do more than mention here - observations about surfing that have simply never been made before, or certainly never so well. Barbarian Days is an old-school adventure story, a social history, an extraordinary exploration of one man's gradual mastering of an exacting and little-understood art. Finnegan describes the edgy yet enduring brotherhood forged among the swell of the surf and recalling his own apprenticeship to the world's most famous and challenging waves, he considers the intense relationship formed between man, board and water. Barbarian Days is his immersive memoir of a life spent travelling the world chasing waves through the South Pacific, Australia, Asia, Africa and beyond. William Finnegan first started surfing as a young boy in California and Hawaii. To devotees, it is something else entirely: a beautiful addiction, a mental and physical study, a passionate way of life. I felt privy to mysteries.WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR BIOGRAPHY 2016 WINNER OF THE 2016 WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR PRIZE Surfing only looks like a sport. I knew vaguely that it filled a psychic cavity of some kind - connected, perhaps, with leaving the church, or with, more likely, the slow drift away from my family - and that it had replaced many things that came before it. In 'Barbarian Days,' Finnegan writes of his boyhood and young adulthood in California and Hawaii, where he tries to find his place in the surfing tribe.Īs he does, he realizes that he is compelled by the 'deep mine of beauty and wonder' in surfing, though '(b)eyond that, I could not have explained why I did it. On my knees in the sand, in the twilight, absolutely spent, I was surprised to find myself sobbing.' Here's Finnegan, recalling being a young man, far from home, riding a particularly majestic wave as dark falls on an unpeopled island: 'On the beach, I got only halfway to our campsite. To be sure, the dry world does intrude on 'Barbarian Days' - family, work, politics, writing, even travel to non-surfing locales.īut it is always drawn back, like the author, to the ocean.

Barbarian days a surfing life review